The Sky is Rising: report shows that entertainment industry is thriving; anti-piracy laws are about profit-maximization, not survival


The Sky is Rising is a free 36-page report on all the ways that Internet-era "content companies" are making more money than ever, putting the lie to the funny statistics used by entertainment giants to justify brutal, overreaching copyright laws. Written by Michael Masnick and Michael Ho, The Sky is Rising shows that the entertainment industry's legislative battles aren't a fight for survival, but rather constitute a cold-blooded profit-maximization strategy that cloaks itself in the language of emergency as part of a legislative strategy

For years now, the legacy entertainment industry has been predicting its own demise, claiming that the rise of technology, by enabling easy duplication and sharing — and thus copyright infringement — is destroying their bottom line. If left unchecked, they say, it is not only they that will suffer, but also the content creators, who will be deprived of a means to make a living. And, with artists lacking an incentive to create, no more art will be produced, starving our culture. While it seems obvious to many that this could not possibly be true, since creators and performers of artistic content existed long before the gatekeepers ever did, we've looked into the numbers to get an honest picture of the state of things. What we found is that not only is the sky not falling, as some would have us believe, but it appears that we're living through an incredible period of abundance and opportunity, with more people producing more content and more money being made than ever before. As it turns out… The Sky Is Rising!

The Sky Is Rising!

(via O'Reilly Radar)